Food dye... where to start?? Its in everything- cereal, pop, crackers, chips, candy, cookies, sprinkles, ice cream, cheese, juice. But what's wrong with food dye, its just a color, right? Wrong! So wrong.
Let's go back three years when Brody was just 2.5 years old. Our baby sitter suggested getting Brody evaluated because his speech was really delayed. We didn't know he was delayed because he was our first child and the doctor never mentioned anything to us. We ended up getting him evaluated and he qualified for speech therapy and occupational therapy (OT). We weren't expecting to need an OT but it was THE BEST THING to happen to us. We got so lucky to be placed with an OT who understood Brody and our family as a whole. In the first few weeks, our OT noticed that Brody had OCD tendencies and a lot of anger so she was going to develop a plan of action for the following week. Later that night, I talked to my father-in-law about our therapy session and he suggested that maybe the food Brody eats is causing him to act out (sugar was the likely culprit). I Googled "toddler food sensitivity" and came across an article about food dye. It stated that food dye has several side effects that many people aren't aware of, some include aggressive behavior, migraines, anxiety, ADD/ADHD behaviors.
I couldn't believe what I was reading- and I didn't just stop at that one article, I kept going. The more I read, the more I realized that the "harmless" food dye was the reason that my toddler was so out of control of his own thoughts- it wasn't terrible two's.
The next day, I purged our pantry, fridge and freezer of ANYTHING that contained artificial colors: mac n cheese, chips, cereal, etc. I ended up with three reusable totes filled with food that contained food dye. I went shopping for some essentials the next day and vowed to read the label of every single thing my kids ate. I won't lie, grocery shopping that week took double the amount of time it usually takes- food dye is disguised by many names, the obvious being Red #40, Yellow #5, Yellow #6 and others that aren't so obvious: Blue Lake (sounds so peaceful, ha!), Sunset Yellow (again, sounds like heaven in a bottle), Allura Red, Indigo Carmine, Tartrazine and the list goes on.
A week later, our OT returned and immediately noticed a HUGE difference in Brody. She came prepared to take major action to gather his pieces and put him back together but it wasn't needed. Writing this makes me want to cry because our first 2.5 years with him were perfect but so difficult. I vividly remember Brody having raging fits if something in his life went wrong or was out of routine, he was unable to walk past the kitchen without closing the cabinets, unable to leave his room unless HE turned off the light, unable to do so many things because his brain was so scrambled.
We continued to be dye free for a year. My husband went along with it because it was what made me happy... until a trip to Target about four months into our dye free journey and then he saw just how necessary it was. I was working at the time and he took the two boys to Target, the boys were getting hungry so he stopped to grab them a pretzel with cheese. About 20 minutes after feeding them he called me at work to tell me that Brody is acting really bad and he can't get him under control. I asked what he ate and BINGO we had our cause. After that one instance, my husband was very cautious of what he fed Brody because he saw first hand the harm that food dye causes.
Eating out during that first year was tough too, Brody couldn't eat any processed foods unless I could physically read the label that the food came out of. Treats from school were banned, candy from grandma and grandpa's was kept to a minimum, samples at the store, it was a tedious task.
During the last month of our dye free year, I decided to go dye free too. I realized that I had the same issue as Brody but my body built up a tolerance to being fed artificial food coloring for 27 years so I had no idea there was an issue. One weekend I ate the blue box mac n cheese and had the worst migraine for two days. The next weekend I ate two cinnamon gummy bears and had the same raging temper that I saw in Brody the year prior. The next weekend, I ate two more cinnamon gummy bears and had the same results. This time it was worse, I felt like my life was taking a nosedive, like everything was going wrong, I literally couldn't handle anything going wrong. I turned into a monster almost instantly.
And its not just food that contains artificial colors, are you familiar with FD&C dyes? It stands for Food, Drug and Cosmetics. Brody needed antibiotics once and we had to request that it be dye free, we had to buy dye free Tylenol and ibuprofen. At the dentist, we had to request dye free flouride. We had to be cautious of how many temporary tattoos we put on him at a time because they, too, contained artificial colors that his body absorbed through the skin. This poison is everywhere.
To this day, we still limit the amount of food we eat that contains food dye. I always look for dye free alternatives which wasn't easy or affordable in the beginning but there are several companies who have removed or are in the process of removing food dye from their products. Some of them are below:
- Kraft Mac N' Cheese
- General Mills cereals - they removed the blue and green pieces from Trix cereal because they weren't able to replicate a desirable color to match the artificial color.
- Mars candy and chocolates
If you want more information on the harmful effects of food dye, check out some of my favorite resources below.
http://www.diefooddye.com/
http://www.feingold.org/taylorsmice.php
http://www.webmd.com/add-adhd/childhood-adhd/food-dye-adhd#1
http://www.special-education-degree.net/food-dyes/
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